We're ready to go. We've been ready to go. Not only is Ogg Vorbis playback possible on the demo board we received from iRiver, but it's also a fairly simple implementation. We're standing by, ready to begin work, but we have not yet heard back from iRiver at this time.

The longer iRiver waits on this, the longer it will take us to work this into our schedule, which means that iRiver customers (and potential customers) will have to wait even longer for the support of our format.

Simply put, this is quite disheartening. I *want* iRiver to support Ogg Vorbis, and it looks like the users/consumers do, too. Now that the message board here seems a little more sane (and it'll be more difficult to write to the board as though they were me), I'll post updates to this thread whenever applicable.

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

just got off from a chat with Emmett over at Xiph. That's the guy that will make us all happy with iFP supporting Ogg... if iRiver ever would reply to his emails!

he told me that one month ago iRiver stated that an agreement was near that would allow emmett and the guys to provide Ogg support. but iRiver hasn't got back to him since then. despite repeated emailing.

he also said that, once he gets the agreement with iRiver, they could provide the necessary firmware in about 30 days! come on iRiver! there are other players ahead of you soon!!

sadly, though he said that the test board they got ran Ogg fine, he couldn't tell me what model the board was referring too. so we still don't know if the iFP has the juice to ever be able to play the ogg files...

but anyway, let's all email Xiph and show them our support. Emmett's address is emmett@xiph.org Also mail iRiver at contact@iriver.com and CRAVE them to respond to emmett, who is only awaiting the agreement to make this happen!!

yours
avocade

1.OGG
Iriver Engineer siad ogg will be provided inner 2004
but under the IMP-250 model will unable to provided

Although I do expect even some progress when the iMP 550 CD player comes out. Why you ask? It's got a RISC CPU .

The Volt uses a EP7212 Cirrus Logic chip. It is the equivalent of a Pentium 100. This is a general purpose ARM7TDMI-cored CPU. It's pretty good at running DSP algorithms. (The "M" in TDMI means fast multiply-accumulate.) The 7212 is the same as a 7209 except it has an EDO DRAM interface which is where the buffer ram is attached. The 7209 is used in the Rio600/Rio Receiver/Nike/Nomad IIMG/Dell Receiver/Nomad Jukebox/etc. The Volt has 8k of cache (I+D) and 37.5k of SRAM. This SRAM cannot be used as cache, but does run at full core speed.

Here are all the ICs that make up the unit and what they do:
Samsung K4E151612D-TL50 [1M x 16Bit (2Mb) CMOS EDO DRAM]
Sony CXD3032R [CD-ROM controller with 1Mb embedded DRAM]
This takes care of the actual decoding of the bits on the CD, such as what type of CD it is (Audio/CD-R/MultiRead.)
Cirrus EP7212-CV-D [ARM CPU + LCD/Serial/Audio]
SST 39VF400A [4Mbit flash ROM]
CXA2571N [Sony RF Matrix Amplifier]
BA5901K [ROHM CD/CD-ROM Driver]
Standard LSI used in CD players. A driver for the motor.

EP7212: High Performance, Low-Power System-on-Chip with LCD Controller and Digital Audio Interface (DAI)
Product Features:
ARM720T processor
Dynamically programmable clock speeds of 18, 36, 49, and 74 MHz at 2.5 V
Performance matching 100-MHz Intel® Pentium-based PC
Ultra low power
Advanced audio decoder/decompression capability
LCD controller
DRAM controller
Memory control
38,400 bytes (0x9600) of on-chip SRAM for fast program execution and/or as a frame buffer
Synchronous serial interface
On-chip ROM; for manufacturing support
27-bits of general-purpose I/O
Two UARTs (16550 type)
SIR (up to 115.2 kbps) infrared encoder / decoder
DC-to-DC converter interface (PWM)
Two timer counters
208-pin LQFP or new 256-ball PBGA packages
Evaluation kit available with BOM, schematics, sample code, and design database
Support for up to two ultra-low-power CL-PS6700 PC Card controllers
Dedicated LED flasher pin from RTC
Full JTAG boundary scan and Embedded ICE® support
Commercial operating temperature range
Product Description:
The EP7212 is designed for ultra-low-power applications such as organizers / PDAs, two-way pagers, smart cellular phones or any vertical PDA device that features the added capability of digital audio decompression. The core-logic functionality of the device is built around an ARM720T processor with 8 K-bytes of four-way set-associative unified cache and a write buffer. Incorporated into the ARM720T is an enhanced memory management unit (MMU) which allows for support of sophisticated operating systems like Microsoft Windows CE.
The EP7212 also includes a 32-bit Y2K-compliant realtime clock and comparator.

...I've implemented Ogg on the ARM7TDMI 74MHz (Cirrus Maverick), so doing it is not impossible.

(yes, it was realtime playback, although I'll admit is was close, as half the processor had to be left over for housekeeping chores)

This is ridiculous, iRiver is a bunch of amateurs.
They are not being serious at all.
With proper cooperation and devotion, projects like these should take no time to execute.
iRiver is not adding Ogg Vorbis, they're apparantly just using it as a selling-carrot.
My patience is out - this "coming soon - next month - almost done" crap is not two nickles worth.

but remember the information on this page

you could be right, but remember the information on this page:

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/hardware.html

It has been said that Ogg Vorbis playback is possible (sort of) on the Iomega HipZip. Unofficial firmware exists which lets the HipZip play Vorbis files made with old (prior to 20010615) encoders.

If I remember correctly, it took about 4 or 5 weeks for Monty of Xiph.Org and the people at Iomega to get the firmware up and running, and running well, consuming about half of the player's resources.

Behold..
http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20000925S0054
.. it is said that HipZip uses the EP7212.

iRiver uses the EP7212 for its iMP-50,100,150 line and the EP7312 for its iMP-250,350,400 line. (N.B. The EP7312 is the EP7212's big brother, as far as I know.) That should mean that Vorbis playback on an iRiver iMP player really is worth wishing for. : )

Now, about the iFP line.
Behold..
http://www.vorbis.com/ot/20030429.html
.. Monty is hard at work right now, to make Vorbis playback feasible on machines with little memory. I hope that means Vorbis playback on an iFP player isn't just a pipe dream.

Prentice

Xiph.org is working with prototypes from iRiver to create a portable music player which can play Ogg Vorbis. Development is underway.

Dear iRiver.

It has come to my attention, that Xiph foundation has been ready for months to provide the software neccesary to make your portable music player support the multiplatform audio codec "Ogg Vorbis".
However - you are not responding to their e-mails, you are not doing anything at all besides coding debile computergames for your players.
I'm giving you a warning. If you do not immediately get on track, prioritize this higher, and get your firmware updated, so my two iRiver units will play Ogg Vorbis, I will set up an anti-iriver propaganda wave on the internet, and I will spread rumours, that you will not like.
Dangerous batteryunit, stuttering playback, fragile design, bad customer support, flawed cd-lasers - only fantasy sets limits on what the iRiver brand can be recognized for. Get serious - get working, or your brand value will be going towards zero.

I you do not reply within a week with a very good excuse for this endless delay, I will launch anti-iRiver propaganda on several hundred internet forums and newsgroups.

Do not play tricks with your customers.

Yours sincerly
Niels Buus Christensen, very impatient iRiver customer.

Dear Niels,
    Thank you for your email. May be you just listen to the people in xiph which is not the complete story, actually we contact xiph.org in early janaury last year(2002), however we haven't receive any email from xiph until June when they write in the forum(not email back to us) that they claims willing to support iRiver on this issue. At that time xiph also release a fix point library(july 2002) which seems to be good to iRiver product, our engineer test the code immediately however the performance is not good enough for our player to do real-time decoding(we finished the basic codec of our player on september,2002). The code need to be fine tuned, and I can say, without the help from xiph, the progress is very slow.

    I hopes that you understand that actually the Ogg Vorbis support is in the list of our future plan, however if the performance of the codec cannot be improved, it is not possible to release the support of Ogg Vorbis, actually iRiver's firmware is the most frequently updated firmware in MP3 world, of course we also want to support Ogg Vorbis as soon as possible, this is a function that is requested by many of our user, however please understand that it is much more difficult than what we expect.

    If you have further enquiries, please feel free to contact us again.

Regards,
Eddie

Dear Niels,
    Thank you for your email. May be you just listen to the people in xiph which is not the complete story, actually we contact xiph.org in early janaury last year(2002), however we haven't receive any email from xiph until June when they write in the forum